UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
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Item Paradigm Disguise: Systemic Influences on Newspaper Plagiarism(2007-04-25) Lewis, Norman Paul; Kunkel, Thomas; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A first-ever study of newspaper plagiarism behavior affirms that plagiarism is not merely an individual-level violation of journalism ethics, but results from a professional ideology that justifies copying and minimizes attribution. The inductive study analyzed all known plagiarism cases over a 10-year period at U.S. daily newspapers, complemented by depth interviews with eight of those journalists. Only five of the 76 cases studied involve the acute type of plagiarism associated with Jayson Blair of the New York Times; the vast majority of cases in a four-factor typology involve garden-variety plagiarism that afflicts exemplary journalists, including two Pulitzer-Prize winners. Even when controlling for the fact that bigger newspapers have more employees, plagiarism cases occur disproportionately more often at newspapers with circulations greater than 250,000. Larger papers also are more likely to retain journalists accused of plagiarism, while papers below that size are more likely to dismiss. Sanctions are associated with terminology; public use of "plagiarism" correlates with dismissal, while the use of synonyms is related to retention of the employee. Since Blair, the rate of cases has roughly tripled, a change that probably reflects greater transparency rather than an increase in behavior, and the percentage of plagiarism cases that ends in dismissal has grown. A model is created that identifies four antecedents of plagiarism behavior. Two causes are individual, rationalizing dishonesty and problematic techniques, and two are situational, definitional ambiguity and attribution aversion. Definitions and sanctions vary widely, in part because they are situationally determined; newspapers allow perceived intent, genre and zero-tolerance policies to define plagiarism, while sanctions are influenced by the paper's prior ethical infractions and a desire to engage in impression management. Newspapers contribute to plagiarism behavior by substituting injunctions for clear definitions and by preferring paraphrasing to attribution. The study advances the theoretical construct of paradigm disguise to explain the relatively harsh sanctions administered for plagiarism, which can be seen as exposing a journalistic pretense of originality. Plagiarism masks an underlying problem: a refusal to admit that newspaper journalism is built upon copying and imitation. The study concludes with suggestions for how newspapers can reduce plagiarism behavior.Item Reinsert Life Stories: A Description of the Colombian Ex-Guerrillas´Life-Course From a Sociological Perspective(2005-06-03) Florez-Morris, Mauricio; Milkie, Melissa; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation describes the life histories of 42 former left-wing Colombian guerrilla members of the M-19, ELP, and CRS. These reinserts' life course experiences are investigated using a descriptive, life course approach and a qualitative methodology. These life courses are studied in the form of personal life course trajectories that are influenced by the individual (or his or her human agency) and by social circumstances (linked lives, locations in time and place, and timing of lives). Three stages in the reinserts' life course involving the key transitions into and out of the movement are investigated. The first stage, acquiring a rebel identity, involves leaving civilian life and joining a guerrilla movement. Becoming a member of the insurgency is the first turning point in the reinserts' life course. The study identifies seven factors that influence the subjects' decision to enter these groups: (1) family, (2) peers, (3) conflict escalation, (4) generational imprint, (5) biographical availability, (6) individual ideology, and (7) desire to improve economic and social status in the community. The second stage consists of reinserts' adoption and maintenance of their guerrilla identity. Four factors that influenced subjects' staying in the group were: (1) heavy dependence on the group, (2) shared values, (3) clandestine behaviors, and (4) the influence of the group on the subjects' self-identity. The third stage occurs when the subjects undergo the transformation from guerrilla to reinsert status. This involves first leaving the guerrilla movement and then abandoning the political party, AD-M19. This third stage involves a second turning point in the reinserts' life course where first military and then political activities are abandoned. Factors that influenced the subjects' decision to abandon political activities were: (1) the individual's perception that he or she did not matter to the group, (2) an increase in social obligations due to new roles in civilian society, (3) the stigma associated with being a reinsert, (4) political violence against reinserts, and (5) the stripping away of representative functions which had been carried out by the political party.